Elon Musk uses a strange 'panda' analogy while defending his now-defunct DOGE project
Donald Trump's campaign for a second term as U.S. President was supported in a lot of ways by Elon Musk, who was even chosen to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Presently, DOGE has been dissolved, with eight months remaining on its contract with Musk, and Trump is engaging in a war of words with him on social media. In a recent interview, the Tesla boss tried to defend his mission with an unusual comparison to pandas.
At the time of its formation, DOGE’s mission was to cut costs and stop federal funds from being ‘wasted’ as per a report in The Daily Beast. These efforts came under heavy criticism globally, as many believed that these efforts were stopping essential payments to needy people. Musk still believes that there was no wrongdoing involved, as a lot of the money that used to be sent as aid to other countries never reached the beneficiaries.
“Fraudsters necessarily will come up with a very sympathetic argument. They’re not going to say, ‘Give us the money for fraud,’” Musk said to entrepreneur Nikhil Kamath on his 'WTF Is' podcast, before adding, “They’re going to try to make these sympathetic-sounding arguments that are false. It’s going to be like the Save the Baby Pandas NGO, which is like, who doesn’t want to save the baby pandas?”
“They’re adorable. But then it turns out no pandas are being saved in this thing, it’s just corruption, essentially. And you’re like, ‘Well, can you send us a picture of the panda?’ They’re like, ‘No.’ OK. Well, how do we know it’s going to the pandas?” Clearly, this is a bizarre take on the whole matter. After all, DOGE’s contract was canceled with eight months still remaining, and Musk is perhaps scraping the bottom of the barrel to defend the department’s actions.
DOGE’s efforts seemed to have done more harm than good to the American public. The department had claimed that it had saved the government a lot of money. However, these numbers were never independently verified and often came under scrutiny. Initially, Musk had suggested that his department would be able to cut federal spending by a whopping $2 trillion in its first year, and then came down to $1 trillion.
Later on, in a cabinet meeting in April, the Tesla boss drastically cut down that figure to $150 billion. No matter DOGE caused a lot of pain to the American people. Their efforts to cut government spending saw the shutdown of multiple federal departments, which resulted in hundreds of people being laid off. Some of the departments affected were the United States Digital Service and the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service.
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